Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Bryan Fischer Award Nominee: Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer demonstrates once again why I’ve named an award after him, one given to those who show an almost supernatural obliviousness to their own contradictions and an extraordinary ability to project their own worst faults on others. To wit:

I am convinced that there is plenty of hatred in the debate over homosexuality, there’s a lot of hatred, there’s a lot of vitriol, there’s a lot of venom – it is coming from homosexuals themselves. The real haters are homosexuals. The real venom is coming from those that support the homosexual agenda, either homosexual activists, homosexuals, or those that support the homosexual agenda. They are the real haters. There is a heterophobic hatred, there is a Christophobic hatred that is just seething, there’s a dark, venomous, demonic hatred that is in the homosexual community.

That’s just LOL funny, and then I remember this is projection where Fischer’s hatred and bigotry justifies hatred inflicted on millions, including children. Including hatred which is institutionalized in both our government and politically powerful religious denominations.

There is a heterophobic hatred, there is a Christophobic hatred that is just seething, there’s a dark, venomous, demonic hatred that is in the homosexual community.

This is a really interesting sentence, though. It’s interesting the way he has turned the desire to be treated with respect and equality into a phobia. Not just a phobia (or dislike) of the way gays are being treated by a subset of the fundagelical crowd, but a full-on phobia of those who are hetero, and also those who are Christian.

Well, it’s true. There are people who, when told that they are evil and don’t deserve to exist, do not understand that as an act of Christian love and fail to return that love and kindness to people like Bryan.

People have to remember that the groups most vehemently against gays are also the same people who think you have to beat the fear of God into children. They commit violence against those they love, as an act of love.

They hate gays, and the hating on them is an act of love.

For them hate is love. Lying is telling the truth. Self-congratulation is humility.

Whew! I started firing up my new Super-Duper Irony Dampener in tandem with my usual, very expensive, irony meter whenever Fischer is mentioned, because I got tired of having said expensive meters creating free-form art on the walls around me every time I read something that *cough* person has said. So far, so good. And if my poor, abused irony meter can take that little gem with only a smell of burnt plastic and a sad little bleat, then I think I may finally have found a system that works.

Can’t run the SDID all the time, the power costs are prohibitive, but at least I can hope to make my irony meters last a while.

It’s funny how Fischer seems to be decrying hatred in and of itself…up until the last sentence, where he only criticizes certain KINDS of it It’s like he realized as he was speaking that he himself holds certain hatreds, and thus backtracked by adding the qualifying adjectives (“heterophobic,” “Christophobic,” “dark,” “demonic,” “venomous”).

Yes, being angry that people call you vile names, beat you, deny you jobs, make laws to stop you from adopting children, try to make it unconstitutional for you to marry and generally dehumanize you is displaying “…dark, venomous, demonic hatred”.

I feel sorry for poor Bryan Fischer and all of the other good Christians that are just “reaching out to homosexuals with the love of Jesus”.

Humph! I’m strongly heterosexual, and find the concept of homosexuality rather “icky”. (Nothing personal. Even the concept of one’s parents getting it on has a strong “ewww” factor.) But, my personal sensitivities shouldn’t affect what someone else does or feels if that’s who and what they are. Yet, because I “strongly support the homosexual agenda”, I somehow have a “seething” “heterophobic hatred” for other straight people??? Really? I had no idea.

Maybe it’s that self-hatred thing that Evangelicals are always going on about. I never understood that myself. Evangelicals always seem to want to “save” me from personal foibles that I was never aware of.

I’m strongly heterosexual, and find the concept of homosexuality rather “icky”. (Nothing personal. Even the concept of one’s parents getting it on has a strong “ewww” factor.) But, my personal sensitivities shouldn’t affect what someone else does or feels if that’s who and what they are.

Well said, and almost word-for-word what I have been telling my wife, who leans toward (without actually falling all the way into) the Fischer position on this- “your (or my, for that matter) personal ‘ewww!’ has no claim to be the basis for public policy concerning things that don’t affect you or the public.” I would imagine that homosexuals feel the same sense of “ewww!” for our activities as we do for theirs.
And then when you consider the amount of pure, shrill emotion behind Fischer & co’s “ewwww!” (but not my wife, thank god- she’s not so emotionally invested in it)- well, I’ve always thought that Christianity, just by itself, involves a voluntary relinquishment of a certain amount of rationality; but this sort of thing takes that to a whole new level of pure and deliberate insane.

Tacking on to #14 and #19, I’m a heterosexual “shrug supporter” of gay marriage, as in: “Do you support gay marriage?” [shrug] “Sure why not? No skin off my nose.” Amazing that Fischer can see this semi-apathy as self-hatred. The man is a loon.

We always talk about Fischer’s projection issues, and he sometimes (very, very, occasionally) amuses me. But this? This is delusionally psychotic. At the very least, this man has become a danger to others, if not himself, and is in need of legally enforceable intervention.

Unfortunately, the psychos are running the loony-bin, so I guess there’s no real hope for him.